a Florida gardening blog

Are Those Plants in There?!

My husband, so tolerant of my backyard gardening, came home to an interesting sight one evening.

Can you tell where these flats are?

Here are a few hints: enclosed area, bad lighting, mild warmth.

Yep, the oven!

The tomatoes were in there because of the petunias.

You see, the tomato and flower seeds sowed on the 1st hadn’t germinated yet; and weren’t likely to germinate anytime soon, thanks to the cool temperatures. With many nights reaching freezing temperatures, the flats were coming in and out, depending on the weather forecast.

After one night in my laundry room, I had petunia sprouts!

So I reasoned with myself, “If a little warmth is good, more warmth must be even better!”

So on the 11th of February, I decided to try the oven trick, which is when you put your seeds in the oven with just the light on – NO OTHER HEAT!

This is when my dear husband noticed them. 🙂 He got over his shock quickly, which probably only makes you wonder what other crazy things I’ve done for my plants…

Anyway, back to this story. I was so eager to check them the next morning. Can you believe that the little oven light had produced enough heat that I was seeing germination overnight! I was so excited!

Here are some brand new tomato seedlings.This oven method is wonderful for the seeds that need warmth to germinate, like peppers and eggplants.

Just be sure that you get them under a bright light source THAT DAY. I knew that I should get them under light, but didn’t. As a result,a few seedlings were sacrificed on the altar of experience.

If you do not get the newly germinated plants under strong light, they reach so hard for the oven light or for the light from a distant window that they grow leggy, flop over, and die.

Tragic, yes, I know. But I still had plenty of tomato seedlings and a valuable lesson had been learned. I have 8 varieties of tomatoes that I will be growing this year and they are all growing well and should be ready for transplant soon.

Now hopefully I won’t turn the oven on and bake my ‘California Wonder’ bell pepper seeds that are in there today. My husband has enough stories. 🙂

my husband picked on me all year last year that I would only water my basil with filtered water. But I had to re-pot them three times, they just kept getting bigger than I had imagine they would. Each bush was as tall as my armspan and half as wide maybe wider. So I guess it payed off. haha.